The other day I ran into an old coworker from my days in retail.
I never cared for her; she was a drama queen. But as we caught up, I was happy for her accomplishments. Despite being married with several kids, she managed to graduate college, and holds a respectable job that allows her to work remotely, to stay home with her kids.
When I told her of my name change, however, she gave me a compliment I hear all too frequently, but one I am glad to hear personally, “You’re not like other ‘trans’ people I knew.”
She gave me praise that I try to live my life as an ordinary man, not live my life as a transgender.
Why, and what do I mean? This is one of those things that separates us transsexuals from transgenders, nonbinaries, and other members of the “trans” umbrella—they wear their “transness” on their sleeve, making it the first (if not usually the only thing) thing they tell themselves to others, if not reducing themselves to one-dimensional caricatures. Enbies (“non-binaries”) go even worse, insisting non-trans (I will not call them “cisgender”/”cissexual”) individuals ask about pronouns, because apparently “presentation does not dictate pronouns”.
Transsexuals, on the other hand, just want to live as ordinary, assimilating members of the opposite sex; we want our actions to shine, not our sex changes. We just want to live our lives as normal people, not as stand-out freak shows. Yes, we still respect if not celebrate diversity; we just refuse to reduce ourselves to the caricatures transgenders make themselves out as.
I worked long and hard to undergo a sex change so I could my life as a man, not as a “trans man”. Yes, I understand the reality that while my body has masculinized thanks to hormones, my body will never become “fully” male, but “man” and “woman” are as much social as they are biological. I worked hard to undergo a sex change so I could live my day-to-day life as “one of the boys”, not to remain in some third- or alt-gendered category that separates me from the other 99+% of society in a group that wants to turn all of society upside down to accommodate their minuscule numbers. I don’t live in stealth, but I don’t “come out” the moment I first meet someone new. Calling myself a transsexual means it’s an adjective to describe part of my history and biology, not a noun that encapsulates my “identity”; so when I say the term, people know what happened to my body, it’s a concrete and simple definition, and we can move the conversation onward rather than ruminate for an hour on “the deconstruction of the difference between ‘sex’ and ‘gender'”.
A lot of this philosophy roots from very early in my sex change; my parents wanted me to resocialize to live as a man during and after my sex change, and not live openly as a transgender. We can argue all day what it means to be a man, but it’s also another reason why I call myself transsexual: my sense of identity has never changed, only that my body has. It’s why I simply wanted to masculinize my name, rather than go with a new one. It’s why I insist people see me as a man, rather than call myself a “transsexual man”.
Now, I understand it looks hypocritical that offline I don’t wear being transsexual on my sleeve, but here on my blog I point out my transsexualism in most blog posts. That’s because this blog is about my life after my sex change, and how that experience often influences my opinions, values, and decisions. When I am out and about, it’s one thing; when I am online, it’s a different game I play.
I am not building walls. I just refuse to associate with a cult that insists on changing my story to fit its propaganda, a group that demands the entire world turn upside down to benefit itself at the disadvantage of the sheer majority, that shits on most people. They can choose to live like snowflakes, but no one is immune to the consequences of their actions, and that is they are finally facing “cancel culture” themselves.
